


Stitch a Seam Across the Eye

by newyorktopaloalto



Series: An Invincible Summer [1]
Category: Les Misérables - All Media Types
Genre: Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, Enjoltaire Gift Exchange, Gen, M/M, R is an idealist trapped in a cynic's body
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-06-20
Updated: 2013-06-20
Packaged: 2017-12-15 13:22:47
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,308
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/850018
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/newyorktopaloalto/pseuds/newyorktopaloalto
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Grantaire missed it; he missed the thrill of a victory and the camaraderie of a loss. He missed being in the thick of things, seeing hope in people’s eyes and opening their minds to <em>what could be, don’t you see it could be so much better?</em></p>
            </blockquote>





	Stitch a Seam Across the Eye

**Author's Note:**

> For tumblr user amigrandr, for the Enjoltaire Gift Exchange. The prompt I was given was, 'Enjolras doesn't see R.' 
> 
> Title comes from the amazingly talented Róisín Murphy, and her song Ramalama (Bang Bang). 
> 
> First Les Mis fic, so I hope I didn't screw up too terribly.

It was not often that Grantaire actually gave a damn whether or not he was noticed. As a child he was always quiet— the type of melancholy his mother called ‘dreamers.’ Still though, when the time came that little Grand-R needed noticing, someone was always there with a smile and a piercing look; he didn’t know why it wasn’t the case anymore. R could blame it on many things— across the country from his family, trying to fit into college life, trying not to overwhelm his few friends (who were so busy Grantaire could hardly believe they could keep up with their own problems, let alone his,) working two jobs, so on and so forth. At the end of the day, however, he knew he could only blame himself. College took almost everything out of him, and the only thing he had left was the silence that pervaded his childhood. He was there, in the middle of a group, but no one saw him. Most of the time he didn’t much care, content to lurk around the edges and casually interject opinions he did not quite know if he actually believed. But sometimes— well, sometimes even R wished that he could be seen. 

***  
He knew that it was a cliché— meeting a group of people whom would change your life, in the middle of a rush hour shift at the bar you worked out. At first Grantaire didn’t think much about the group of slightly obnoxious boys, they seemed like any other frat kids that walked into the Corinth, but when one of them expounding on Rousseau— and the fuck talked that kind of shit seriously?, he started listening in. 

At twenty-four and just finishing up his bachelors in journalism, a fairly useless fine arts degree already under his belt, Grantaire was normally wary of working the night shift at the bar— he didn’t need idealistic, barely twenty-one-year-olds trying to talk about the exploitation of the common man in Libya whilst on their third Jaeger. After all, who knew better of the exploitation of constituents than someone whose job it was to uncover everything horrid and terrifying about humanity? Grantaire was once one of those naïve boys, when he first started on his double major, but Palestine and Egypt and even fucking Wall Street made him realize that no matter how hard anyone wanted to change the world, the common man would not rise. He was inconsolable— in a foreign hospital with an almost lost press pass, and seeing more dead than living wheeled in through the double doors. 

His therapist would say that his blatant cynicism was nothing more than PTSD, that if he took this medication and had that treatment his outlook on life and humanity would once more be full of that hopeless, inane idealism. That insight might very well be the case, but Grantaire would take real cynicism over drugged happiness any day. 

“What do you recommend?” 

A loud, slightly commandeering voice overtook his thoughts, and he snapped his head up to look into the eyes of one of the students he had previously been contemplating. A slight flush settled over his cheeks, because he had probably missed the first couple of times the student had spoken. 

“Sorry,” he muttered, looking around and giving a slight glare at a smirking Montparnasse. “Um, for you?” He looked the man up and down, “I’d go classic, Jack and Coke.” 

The guy grinned and nodded, ordering three of them. Grantaire got to work quickly, keeping an ear on the other’s conversation as he smirked to himself. Once the man started talking about abolishing the patriarchy, he couldn’t help his snort. God, but there was a middle-class, white dude talking about getting rid of sexism. It would be funny if it weren’t so sad— Grantaire could see the other leering at a girl across the bar as he spoke to his bespectacled friend. 

“What?” the guy practically demanded, his brown curls bouncing slightly against his forehead. 

“Maybe you should talk to someone who is actually affected by the patriarchy, is all,” Grantaire suggested, shrugging and handing him his three drinks. “Just a suggestion. But I think you’ll be able to find out what will really help if you, I don’t know, talk to women about it…?” 

The guy stared at him for a moment, eyes narrowing, and Grantaire could feel his tip slowly dwindling into nothing. Fuck, this is why he hated students— he started arguing with them and then his $300 a night turned into a meager $150 or less. 

“I’m Courfeyrac,” the man stated instead, holding out a hand to Grantaire, “you should come to one of our meetings— Les Amis de l’ABC, we’re an activist group with republic and anarchist leanings. I think your input would be great, we meet every Friday at the Musain at 3pm.” 

“Grantaire,” R replied, shaking the man’s hand, before raising his eyebrow at the fact they met at the Musain. 

“I work at the Musain,” he added, at Courfeyrac’s questioning look. “Usually Monday through Thursdays though, but I think I actually have seen you before, now that I look at you closely.” 

Courfeyrac grinned and muttered a, ‘well, no one can forget a pretty face like mine,’ before tipping his drink back and heading over to the table his friends were at. 

“3pm!” he called behind his shoulder, smiling at Grantaire’s very hesitant thumbs up. 

This would be the worst idea that Grantaire would ever have, he could feel it. Because he hated revolutionary types and idealism and his cynicism would no doubt make that man and all his friends hate him. He wasn’t going to do it— he was not. 

***

But he supposed that if nothing else, he was masochistic, because Friday at three PM, he found himself at the Musain, ignoring his co-worker’s curious gaze as he trudged into the back room. He was going to regret this for the rest of his life, he could tell. 

He opened the door as he took a deep breath, immediately assaulted with the commandeering presence of a blond, who was speaking from a slightly raised platform with a fire in his eyes that Grantaire swallowed instinctively at. Oh God, he was fucked. 

Fortunately— or unfortunately depending on his mindset at the time, no one noticed his presence. He took a few deep breaths, eyes darting around the group of college students as his grip on the door handle tightened unconsciously. There were around a dozen of them, probably less, but Grantaire wasn’t particularly in the right mindset to count them out. If anything, he was happy to just be standing— he didn’t fit well into a group of revolutionaries, especially those without scars or bruises, or even knowing what the real world would throw at you if you tried to change it. 

The blond, after pausing for a moment to look around the room, stuttered as his gaze focused on Grantaire. R stared back, eyes wide as he took in the hopeful expression of having another convert, before abruptly turning away and leaving the room. He was not going to go through that again— never again. 

Grantaire hardly got to the front door, before his arm was tugged on, and he glanced the slight distance up to see the blond up close. 

“Wrong room,” he murmured, shrugging and futilely trying to tug his arm away. 

“Are you Grantaire?” 

Grantaire tilted his head as he slowly nodded, cheeks flushing inexplicably. God, this man was doing something to him, but he couldn’t quite tell if he was jealous, hateful, or enamored. The blond gave R a rueful grin, before tugging on his arm lightly, getting Grantaire into the back room once more and next to Courfeyrac. 

“This is Grantaire,” he stated to the room as a whole, stepping back onto the platform once more. “Courfeyrac said he made some good, if not slightly cynical, points about feminism in a bar the other day.

“We’re the Les Amis de l’ABC,” he continued, speaking only to Grantaire right then, “I’m Enjolras, this is my second, Combeferre,” he nodded towards a handsome brunet with glasses, whom Grantaire could only compare to Matthew McConaughey in A Time to Kill, “and you already know Courfeyrac. I’m sure the others will he happy enough to introduce themselves to you in due time— they’re vicious gossip-mongers, so be warned.” 

A slightly larger man booed and threw a paper ball at Enjolras, who took the beaming to the side of the head with a grace that befitted either royalty, or one who was used to having paper balls thrown at him. Judging by his precisely cultivated eyebrow raise and a long-suffering, “Bahorel,” Grantaire had his bet on the latter. Immediately after the apparent Bahorel settled down, Grantaire felt something wet on his arm. 

“Excuse me,” he stated to a man in wire-framed glasses, a rose tucked in behind his short, auburn hair. 

“Oh don’t mind me, you just befit poetry,” came the response, “and hold still, please, I don’t want to ruin this verse.” 

Grantaire, for lack of anything better to do, stayed still, only casting a slightly helpless glace at Courfeyrac, who just grinned and shrugged. The bastard. 

“That’s Jean,” he finally stated, apparently done silently laughing at R’s confusion, “most people call him Jehan though. He’s a poet of a sort, and he gets it into his head that personal space is not a thing people need.” 

“You’re one to talk,” Jehan snorted, “Grantaire, talk to Feuilly about Courfeyrac’s lack of respect of personal space— he’ll tell you some horror stories.” 

“Feuilly?” Grantaire asked, head already spinning with all the names and faces and personalities and oh shit, he really needed to get out of here before be did something stupid. 

“Over there.” 

Jehan pointed with the tip of his sharpie, indicating to another brunet, who was arm wrestling with— fuck, what was his name? Bahel? Barool? Grantaire was so not getting the hang of this, and ever second he stayed, he felt like he was ripping apart at the seams. 

Grantaire had not been close to being true friends with people since Egypt— since he and a group of aspiring journalists blew all their money on tickets and stood at the front lines revolting, cowards behind their press passes. He could tell now, though, that if he stayed with this group of men any longer, it would just be another Egypt, another Palestine, another Wall Street. Glory in the moment, but the fall just wasn’t worth it again. After Egypt he had spiraled worse than he ever before— even Éponine, his best friend since junior high, couldn’t pull him out of his drunken and drugged downward cycle. It took three ER trips, almost losing his scholarship, and an overnight stint in a psych ward to make him realize that the world was fucked up, and nothing he could do would make it better. 

And these men? This group and their charismatic and captivating revolutionary leader? Well, they would make him believe again. Grantaire couldn’t believe again. 

“I think your idea is stupid,” he called out in a desperate hope to gain some of his sudden lost footing, having no idea what Enjolras was even talking about. 

“Trying to change state-wide immigration reform?” Enjolras asked dryly, crossing his arms and giving Grantaire the most unimpressed stare Grantaire had ever received. 

Shit. State-wide immigration reform. Not what he had thought, but he supposed he could make it work. 

“Whatever you do isn’t going to change anything. I mean, look at you all.” He paused for effect, trying to remember what he had learned on the lines and trying to rally the people. “You’re all just a bunch of middle to upper-class college kids. No one’s going to listen to you, and even if someone did, the people who matter won’t. Everyone who it affects is just going to think of you all as some trust-fund babies who are rebelling against their parents, and won’t put their support behind you. Those that do will do it fleetingly, until someone who actually relates to them comes along. The other support you’re going to get _is_ from trust-fund kids rebelling against their parents, and once the money stops, the support stops.” 

He stopped, almost abruptly, and sat down, not even remembering when he had stood up in the first place. His breathing was almost haggard, and he unclenched his fists, trying to regain the feeling he had lost in his fingers during his tirade. Enjolras was staring at him, through him, and Grantaire picked up his bag, striding out the door once more. Well, there went that group of potential friends. 

***

Three hours later he got a text from Courfeyrac, (and when did the other man even get his number? Seriously, it was creepy,) saying that he had to come to the next meeting, he just had to, because Enjolras had never been so enraged before, and it just made his arguments more fool-proof. 

Grantaire supposed he could be the cynic, maybe getting some of the students to realize what they were doing was pointless, but mostly just hoping for them to prove him wrong. He doubted it, but he hoped. And maybe, in the end, that would be his true downfall. 

***

No one noticed him unless he was dissenting with an opinion of Enjolras. Grantaire should have been happy about that— after all, wasn’t it his goal to be quiet and observe and sit in a corner to see how people lived? He should have been happy, but the longer he went to meetings the more he longed to be a real part of the group. He missed it; he missed the thrill of a victory and the camaraderie of a loss. He missed being in the thick of things, seeing hope in people’s eyes and opening their minds to _what could be, don’t you see it could be so much better?_

Most of all, however, he just wished he could stop fucking up— let the Amis see who he was and what he was before and why he hated everything, but wanted to believe in anything. He wanted to believe, but he took great care not to, and no one could see that. It was his own damn fault, but Grantaire just wished that someone could break the shell he had put upon himself, because it was too thick after everything that happened for Grantaire to do it himself. In the end, though, he was a coward, and he knew he wouldn’t be showing signs of needing to change— afraid of what would happen to his limited sanity if he did. 

He shouldn’t have been surprised, in hindsight, that it was the one closest to his own personality that saw him first. 

***  
There hadn’t been any sound in his apartment since Éponine had left three hours prior— his mouth only making the slightest of sounds as he breathed in the nicotine from his place on the fire escape. This wasn’t abnormal and Grantaire didn’t know whether or not he should be relieved; the consistency was always nice, but sometimes he did wish he had company other than his own burning lungs. Éponine, however, was too busy mooning over fucking Pontmercy (and he really should not have introduced the slight space-cadet to his best friend,) to hang out anymore, and most of his other friends— though he hesitated to actually call them that, were too busy having fun instead of just tolerating his presence. He wasn’t hateful, as if Grantaire were any of them, he probably wouldn’t be able to stand him either. 

So it came as a pleasant (horribleterribleveryverybad) surprise when at fucking one AM he received a text message from Jehan. 

**Prouvaire:** it’s beautiful out, you should come stargaze with me!!! :D  <3 :) 

Grantaire snorted and replied negatively, so he did not quite actually know how it came to be two-thirty in the morning, stuffed hastily into a jacket, and shivering in a field in God-knew-where. Fucking Jehan, those metaphorical puppy eyes always got to him in the end. 

“So why me?” he finally asked, voice slightly muffled around the menthol filter of his cigarette. 

“What do you mean?” Jehan murmured, his voice lilting like fucking dewdrops and fairy breath. 

“I mean why not Courfeyrac or Bossuet or even fucking Combeferre? Why me?” 

Jehan blinked at Grantaire steadily for a minute, mouth forming words but no sound actually coming from it. Grantaire supposed that he was trying to find the perfect thing to say. 

“Because I see you,” the younger men finally replied with a gentle smile overtaking his eyes, and they shone with a brightness normally reserved for Keats or spring flowers. Grantaire licked his lips to make a bad joke about ghosts and seeing things, but nothing actually came from him except a slight exhalation. Prouvaire’s smile spread as he practically skipped over to where Grantaire stood, and he leaned slightly down to place a gentle kiss on his cheek. 

“I see you,” he whispered once more, and Grantaire nodded softly in response, a half bitter, half relieved smirk donning his cracked lips. 

“You’d be the first,” he managed to get out, stubbing out the butt of his cigarette with his boot. 

Jehan’s smile turned almost incandescent, his eyes glittering with a strange secret. “I won’t be the last, R.” 

And suddenly Grantaire’s silence was replaced with the laughter of bells and sonnets posted to his walls— the lingering scent of wildflowers and earth and ink pervading his nicotine and turpentine infused flat. But now that the silence was actually gone, Grantaire found that he didn’t miss it. 

***

Courfeyrac, unsurprisingly, was the next to hear Grantaire’s story, and soon almost everyone in the Les Amis actually understood (Courfeyrac, if nothing else, was good at telling people all sorts of things he probably should not have been telling.) It was exhilarating, a relief to have someone place a hand on his arm when something Enjolras ranted about hit too close to him and to both physical and mental injuries. It was a relief, but it was also a kind of hell— they knew, and sometimes Grantaire could see the pity written on their faces as he tried to dig himself up from the hole of cynicism that he had lived in for far too long. But dig he did, and sometimes he could almost breathe fresh air, feel the fire of change rush through his veins and spark his nerves and color his eyes with a shade darker blue than he normally sported. 

R was almost fully alive, and everyone could see that. Everyone except the one, in Grantaire’s mind, who mattered the most. 

***

 

Being in love (awejealousyhatred) with someone who couldn’t, didn’t want to, see you was difficult. Grantaire supposed it was his penance for giving up his faith in humanity, and still feeling the bitterest urges to despise rather than help when he learned of an atrocity. _People do this because they’re inherently bad,_ as opposed to _we can make people better,_ as it were. 

“He’ll come around,” Jehan would murmur as he wrote on R’s arms to distract him from the burning gaze that always slid past him or through him. Grantaire didn’t comment upon on how Jehan’s longing glances were becoming increasingly more desperate the more his intended didn’t see. 

“Being in love is being invisible,” Grantaire would say in reply, sighing and giving Jehan a small smile and a kiss to the cheek once the poet finished another original, or even a quote. 

Whoever said that love was blind did not fully understand being in love. Grantaire couldn’t breathe whenever he was around Enjolras, cheeks flushing a bright red and fingers tingling with nerves that he normally only felt before having to go and speak in public. He believed in everything Enjolras said so fully, but could not convince himself that it was wholly right. He believed in Enjolras so fully, and he wanted Enjolras to maybe, please, believe in him too. But after Enjolras giving him so many chances, and Grantaire ruining every single one of them— what the fuck was wrong with him?, he knew that the other was just tired. Grantaire would be as well, were the roles reversed. 

***

“Why do you come here?” 

Grantaire raised his eyebrows, his hands stopping the absent-minded cleaning of the café counter at Enjolras’ imperious tone. 

“Well considering that I’ve been working here for two years…” He let the rest of his sentence trail off, his still raised eyebrows hopefully doing the rest of the work for him. 

“I meant why do you listen in on us and even stay after your shift until we finish our meetings? For God’s sake, Grantaire, you don’t believe in our cause, our fight, even our people. You don’t believe in anything, and have been at our meeting to what? Act the fool and try to negate everything we say? It’s almost despicable, your behaviour, and definitely unconscionable.” 

The café was silent— of course there was the probability that silence was only in R’s mind, but the roaring in his ears made it seem like there was no sound. Enjolras’ breathing came out shallow and Grantaire swallowed heavily. 

“Feel better?” he asked a lilt in his voice almost betraying his nonchalant words. 

Enjolras blinked down at him, before tilting his head, eyes narrowed. 

“Yes,” he stated slowly, and Grantaire was almost positive that Enjolras had never looked at him like that before. “How did you—?” 

“You looked stressed and yelling at ‘non-believers’ usually helps you out— I just happened to be here, noticed, and made a comment I knew would rile you up.” 

Grantaire shrugged, thinking nothing of his gesture except the uncontrollable desire to make Enjolras feel better, because Grantaire absolutely despised it when the world got even too much for the ever ideal. The headlines the past week had been bleak, and with finals looming upon them, Grantaire could feel the weight of his own life crashing down on the other. And R, if nothing else, was good at making Enjolras unwind and remember why he believed what he did. 

“I—“ Enjolras started, his cheeks a slight pink that Grantaire couldn’t tell was leftover from the almost yelling or from something else entirely. 

“You’re speechless,” R almost gasped after a moment of silence from Enjolras that Grantaire had thought the other was going to fill. 

“I am,” Enjolras agreed, blinking rapidly, eyes still slightly narrowed in Grantaire’s direction. 

“It’s weird,” Grantaire stated, before turning back to cleaning the countertop, Enjolras’ stare unnerving him the slightest bit. He pretended not to notice that Enjolras kept looking at him for a solid hour after leaving from where Grantaire was working. 

***  
It was three AM, Grantaire was almost out of cigarettes, he had to think of a final project for an International Relations class, and he desperately needed alcohol. The last wouldn’t be happening in a million years, not after his first (lastlastlastplease) relapse wherein he had almost resorted to drinking his paint thinner and Éponine’s nail polish remover. Still though, his hands were shaking, and he couldn’t stop thinking that Jehan had accidentally left live bugs in his apartment when he dropped off a bouquet. 

A knock on his door interrupted him from his reverie, and Grantaire had never been happier for company. 

“Yeah?” he asked, almost throwing the door open in his haste to see another living person after three days of self-imposed isolation in trying to not fail his classes. 

“Hi.” 

Grantaire stood for a moment, rubbing his eyes and making sure he wasn’t _actually_ hallucinating and Enjolras really was at his front door at three in the morning. 

“It’s really late,” was all he managed to reply with, voice almost strangled. 

“You answered, so I assumed you weren’t sleeping,” Enjolras stated, breezing past Grantaire and taking a seat on the couch like he owned it. Grantaire swallowed thickly. 

“What made you this way?” 

“Huh?” 

Enjolras gazed steadily into Grantaire’s eyes, gesturing for the other to sit next to him, blinking slowly, unflinchingly. 

“What made you the way you are? I can’t see it. I want to see it, but I can’t— I need you to explain it to me.” 

R nodded, closed the door, and walked to the other side of the couch. 

“Burn all of your bridges,” he started, the poem coming from memory after two and a half years of reading it, “just so that you can build them again with thicker ropes. Hurt all the people you love and then commit every felony to win them back. Drown yourself in bleach until not even Heaven’s light can compare to how bright you can burn. Turn yourself inside out and paint your organs the color of what you see in your dreams. This is the art of living with a ticking heart— a grenade you throw through windows to make a point that language has no room for. This is how I destroyed you. And this, is how I kept you alive. Dig yourself a ditch, six feet deep, and bury everything that you’ve ever said, everything that you’ve never meant, and everything that has burned you and left you with nothing but ash.” 

Enjolras’ gaze did not waver, but his brow did furrow, his hand making an aborted motion towards Grantaire’s own clenched one. 

“I first read that poem when I was lying in a hospital bed in Egypt after one of the riots. It was one of the only books they had in English, and no piece of literature has ever struck me so intensely since.” 

And as three AM turned into seven AM turned into mid-afternoon, Grantaire could finally understand that Enjolras was looking at him and could _see._

**Author's Note:**

> Poem is by Shinji Moon, I take absolutely no credit. 
> 
> I might do a sequel if I feel so inspired, as I did leave this more open-ended than I usually prefer.


End file.
